Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone; Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Crab Rationalization Program

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 680</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240529-0147]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BM81</RIN> <SUBJECT>Fisheries of the Exclusive Economic Zone; Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Crab Rationalization Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS issues regulations to implement amendments 54 and 55 to the Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) King and Tanner Crabs (Crab FMP). This final rule revises two provisions of the Crab Rationalization Program (CR Program) to do the following: change active crab fishery participation requirements for crab quota share (QS) established for catcher vessel crew (CVC) and catcher/processor crew (CPC), also called C Shares; expand individual processing quota (IPQ) exemptions for custom processing from processor use caps; and remove the processor facility use cap. These actions are intended to promote the goals and objectives of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the Crab FMP, and other applicable laws. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective July 5, 2024, except for the addition of a definition for “Fishing trip” in 50 CFR 680.2 at instruction 2 and the amendments to 50 CFR 680.40 at instruction 5 and 50 CFR 680.43 at instruction 8, which are effective May 31, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of amendments 54 and 55 to the Crab FMP, the Regulatory Impact Reviews (RIRs), and the Categorical Exclusion prepared for this action are available from <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or from the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://fisheries.noaa.gov/region/alaska.</E> Application for Annual Crab IFQ Permit forms are available from <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/permit/bering-sea-and-aleutian-islands-crab-rationalization-applications-and-reporting-forms.</E> NMFS determined that this final action amending the Crab FMP is categorically excluded from requirements to prepare an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), RIR, Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (FRFA), and Social Impact Assessment that were previously prepared for the CR Program are available from the NMFS Alaska Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/region/alaska.</E> Written comments regarding the burden-hour estimates or other aspects of the collection-of-information requirements contained in this final rule may be submitted to NMFS Alaska Region, P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802-1668, Attn: Gretchen Harrington; and to <E T="03">https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under Review” or by using the search function. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Andrew Olson, 907-586-7228, <E T="03">andrew.olson@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NMFS published a Notice of Availability for amendments 54 and 55 to the Crab FMP in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on February 27, 2024 (89 FR 14427), with comments invited through April 29, 2024. NMFS published a proposed rule to implement amendments 54 and 55 to the Crab FMP on March 7, 2024 (89 FR 16510) with comments invited through April 8, 2024. The Secretary of Commerce has delegated her authority to approve fishery management plan amendments to the Assistant Administrator for NOAA fisheries, who approved amendments 54 and 55 on May 29, 2024, after considering information from the public and determining that amendments 54 and 55 are consistent with the Crab FMP, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and other applicable laws. All comments submitted on or before April 29, 2024, were considered in the approval of amendments 54 and 55 and the development of this final rule and no substantive changes have been made from the proposed rule in this final rule. A summary of the comments and NMFS's responses are provided under the heading “Comments and Responses” below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This section includes a brief description of the CR Program and the particular CR Program regulations that would be modified by this final rule and a summary of (1) CR Program, (2) C Shares and Active Participation Requirements, (3) IPQ Use Caps and Custom Processing, and (4) Processer Facility Use Cap. Additional background information and detail about the CR Program is provided in the final rule to implement the CR Program (70 FR 10147, March 2, 2005). In this document, the phrases “crab fishery,” “crab fisheries,” “quota share (QS),” “individual fishing quota (IFQ),” and “individual processor quota (IPQ)” refer to CR Program fisheries and the associated CR Program, unless otherwise specified. A more detailed description of the need for this rule and background information on relevant CR Program elements is included in the preamble to the proposed rule (March 7, 2024, 89 FR 16510) and section 3.2 of the RIRs for amendments 54 and 55. <HD SOURCE="HD2">CR Program</HD> The CR Program initially assigned QS to persons based on their historic participation in one or more of the nine BSAI crab fisheries during a specific time period. Under the CR Program, NMFS issued four types of QS: catcher vessel owner (CVO) QS was assigned to holders of License Limitation Program (LLP) licenses who delivered their catch to shoreside crab processors or to stationary floating crab processors; catcher/processor owner (CPO) QS was assigned to LLP license holders who harvested and processed their catch at sea; CPC QS was issued to operators and crew on board catcher/processor vessels; and CVC QS was issued to operators and crew on board catcher vessels. Each crab fishing year, which is the period from July 1 of one calendar year through June 30 of the following calendar year (§ 680.2), a person who holds QS in one or more of the crab fisheries may receive an exclusive harvest privilege for a portion of the annual total allowable catch (TAC) of a crab fishery, called an individual fishing quota (IFQ). NMFS also issued processor quota share (PQS) to CR Program processors based on their historic participation in one or more of the nine crab fisheries during a specific time period. Each crab fishing year, PQS yields an exclusive privilege to process a portion of the IFQ for each crab fishery, and this annual exclusive privilege is called IPQ. Annually, both harvester and processor QS holders must submit timely applications to NMFS by June 15 to ensure proper issuance of IFQ and IPQ prior to the start of the crab fishing year on July 1. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C Shares and Active Participation Requirements</HD> The Council's intent in creating CVC QS and CPC QS in the CR Program was to provide both a QS holding opportunity for long-term individual fishery participants who intended to remain active in the CR Program crab fisheries and an entry level QS acquisition opportunity for new individual entrants. To qualify for annual issuance of IFQ and to retain QS, CVC QS and CPC QS holders must meet active participation requirements over the most recent, consecutive 3 and 4 crab fishing years. Active participation requirements must be demonstrated by either participating as crew in at least one delivery for a CR Program crab fishery or, if the CVC QS or CPC QS holder was an initial recipient, participating as crew in at least 30 days of fishing in any commercial fishery managed by the State of Alaska or U.S. commercial fishery in Federal waters off Alaska (§ 680.40(g)(2) and (m)). Exemptions from participation requirements exist for CVC QS and CPC QS holders who are new entrants and have held QS for less than 3 or 4 crab fishing years ((§ 680.40(g)(2)(iii) and (m)(5)), initial recipients of QS, or individuals who participated as crew in a crab delivery prior to the CR Program implementation (§ 680.41(c)(1)(vii)(B)). Currently, if a CVC QS or CPC QS holder holds QS exclusively in a single crab fishery and that fishery is closed for an entire crab fishing year, NMFS excludes that year when determining if participation requirements have been satisfied. <HD SOURCE="HD2">IPQ Use Caps and Custom Processing</HD> When the Council recommended the CR Program, it expressed concern about the potential for excessive consolidation of QS and PQS whereby too few persons would control the QS or PQS and the resulting annual IFQ and IPQ. The Council determined that excessive consolidation can have adverse effects on crab markets, price setting negotiations between harvesters and processors, employment opportunities for harvesting and processing crew, tax revenue to communities in which crab are landed, and other factors considered and described in the CR Program EIS. To address the consolidation concerns, the CR Program limits the amount of QS that a person can hold ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> own), the amount of IFQ that a person can use, and the amount of IFQ that can be used ( <E T="03">i.e., fished</E> ) on board a crab fishery vessel. Similarly, the CR Program limits the amount of PQS that a person can hold, the amount of IPQ that a person can use ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the amount of crab they can process), and the amount of IPQ that can be processed and custom processed at a given facility. Collectively, these harvesting and processing limits are commonly referred to as use caps. A custom processing arrangement exists when one IPQ holder has a contract with the owners of a processing facility to have crab processed at that facility, when that IPQ hol ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 45k characters. 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